Ask HN: What OS X software / tweaks / tricks can you not live without? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What OS X software / tweaks / tricks can you not live without?

3 pointsnetcraft5 comments

I recently switched to a mac for my primary development machine, and I'm trying to get used to the ecosystem. Development tools, terminal tweaks and that kind of thing, but anything else that you would immediately put on a new mac.

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Some tools I use daily on OS X

Atom: https://atom.io/

XtraFinder: http://www.trankynam.com/xtrafinder/

iTerm2: https://www.iterm2.com/

SourceTree: https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/

Asepsis: http://asepsis.binaryage.com/ (This prevents creation of new .DS_Store files - nice but doesn't work anymore with OS X 10.11)

homebrew, npm, git, bash aliases..

I'll give this a go.

Above all I think the most essential tool for me is Spectacle https://www.spectacleapp.com/

Homebrew is also a requirement.

Iterm2 to replace the default terminal. I also added this https://github.com/SebastienElet/iterm2-borderless.

Everything else is pretty developer specific in my opinion. I'd recommend Visual Studio Code for a text editor (if you don't already have a preference). It has built-in git integration and installing new plugins is trivial.

I won't say I can't live without them but here are a few I always do. These require a root shell.

Install Xcode command line tools

  xcode-select --install

verbose boot messages

  nvram boot-args="-v"

make Library visible

  chflags nohidden ~/Library

verify Time Machine backups

  tmutil compare

This has been covered many times.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=setup%20mac%20for%20development

In the future if you want better help for a question like this, you should state whether you're familiar with UNIX or not, what type of development you do, what stack you develop for, what languages, what you have already done. etc.

Homebrew

alfred

Spectacle

Bartender

Textbar

Geektool

Xtools

Pushbullet

Mixmax menubar extension

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